The federal Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is investigating whether an unauthorized teach-in by Oakland educators last month about Palestine amounted to discrimination against students on the basis of their shared Jewish ancestry.
In a Jan. 16 letter to Oakland Unified School District Superintendent Kyla Johnson-Trammell, an attorney with the agency wrote that the Office of Civil Rights received a complaint on Dec. 12 about the teach-in.
“The complaint alleges that the District discriminated against students on the basis of national origin (shared Jewish ancestry) when District teachers held a teach-in on Palestine during the school day on December 6, 2023, and allegedly taught elementary school students that a ‘free Palestine means the annihilation of Jews,’” the letter says.
The authorities are investigating whether OUSD failed to comply with the Civil Rights Act to respond to alleged harassment of Jewish students by district employees.
An OUSD spokesperson said the district does not comment on ongoing legal matters.
The investigation was announced last week. Other schools and districts being probed for ethnic discrimination include San Francisco Unified, Newark Public Schools, and universities including Yale, Northwestern, Temple, and Arizona State. By Jan. 23, 18 investigations had been opened in 2024. The exact nature of these other investigations isn’t known because the Department of Education doesn’t publicly disclose the reasons it has launched a probe of a school district.
The Oakland teach-in was not organized by the school district or the Oakland Education Association teachers union. Rather, an independent group of teachers whose aim was to highlight Palestinian perspectives on the war in Gaza were behind the one-day event.
“Oakland educators have worked to find resources, by reputable organizations or individuals, that are relevant to the current events in Gaza and highlight Palestinian perspectives on Palestinian resistance and liberation not found in resources provided by OUSD,” educators wrote in a list of lessons and resources they compiled for the Dec. 6 teach-in.
Some Jewish families in OUSD felt that the curriculum for the teach-in was one-sided and disparaged Israel, Israelis, and Jewish people. The teach-in came weeks after the Oakland Education Association issued a since-deleted statement unequivocally supporting Palestine and calling Israel’s policies and actions toward the Palestinians “genocidal.” These incidents have left some families feeling that antisemitism is prevalent in OUSD.
Over the past few months, more than two dozen Jewish families have withdrawn their students from the district, according to news reports.
Following the news of the investigations into Oakland and San Francisco school districts, the Jewish Community Relations Council, an organization that represents Jewish communities in the Bay Area, released a statement saying its members “have been concerned since October 7 about the safety and belonging of Jewish students in both districts.”
“In this difficult time, JCRC Bay Area urges our local districts to prioritize curriculum on Jewish identity and antisemitism, and develop proactive measures to ensure an inclusive environment for Jewish students and families.”
The letter to OUSD explains that the Office of Civil Rights hasn’t made a determination in the investigation and that the agency is a neutral fact-finder. The office made several requests for records that OUSD must fulfill by Jan. 31. This includes copies of the district’s policies around investigations into discrimination, copies of reports and complaints to OUSD about discrimination in connection with the Dec. 6 teach-in, a list of the classrooms that participated in the teach-in, including students and teachers, emails and social media posts the district received about the teach-in, all complaints made this school year regarding ethnic discrimination, and training for district staff around harassment based on shared Jewish or Israeli ancestry.
The investigation could take months to complete.
Marleen Sacks, an Oakland attorney, filed a complaint against OUSD in November regarding what she believes is antisemitism in the district. Her complaint included references to four alleged incidents: The Palestinian flag flying from the flagpole in front of Fremont High School in November, the December teach-in, a middle school administrator making inflammatory social media posts about Zionists, and a middle school teacher allegedly putting up a “From the River to the Sea” poster in his class.
Sacks told The Oaklandside she filed the complaint to urge the district to investigate the matters.
“When the issues outlined in my press release came to my attention, I was shocked that this was being allowed to occur. I felt the district was not taking appropriate action,” Sacks said. “I’ve been in touch with several parents who are similarly concerned, and I also happen to be Jewish. For all of those reasons, I thought it was very important that the district take some sort of action to find out exactly what happened.”
The educators who participated in the teach-in said at the time that their intent was to create a space for their students to talk about the conflict and to provide insights that they felt were lacking from the district’s suggested lessons.
“The teach-in is a way to bring narratives into the classroom because they have been systemically erased from it, not to erase any other narratives,” an elementary school teacher told The Oaklandside at the time. “We’re not actively working to erase the story of the Jewish diaspora or erase the story of the Holocaust. What we’re doing is working to include and add on.”
OUSD has been investigated before for civil rights issues
This isn’t the first time that the Office of Civil Rights has investigated Oakland schools for ethnic discrimination. A 2012 case looked at whether the district discriminated against Black students by disciplining them more harshly than white students, particularly Black boys.
The initial notice of the investigation, sent to then-superintendent Anthony Smith, noted that in the 2011-2012 school year, Black students comprised about 32% of all students, and 63% of all suspensions. In the 2010-2011 school year, Black boys were 17% of OUSD students and 42% of students suspended. During that year, nearly 10% of Black elementary boys, 33% of middle school Black boys, and 20% of Black boys in high school received a suspension.
OUSD came to an agreement with the Department of Education in September 2012 to establish new disciplinary policies, consider alternatives to expulsion and suspension, provide mentoring to Black boys, and conduct training about the district’s disciplinary policies.
Last year, Black students were 20% of OUSD enrollment and comprised half of those suspended. About 9% of the district’s Black boys were suspended last year, accounting for 29% of the district’s suspensions, according to OUSD data.
